10 Real World Star Trek Locations You Can Visit
8. The One WITHOUT The Whales
As real world Star Trek locations go, there is little more iconic than San Francisco. Every fan knows that the city is the site of Starfleet Headquarters and the Academy (more on those later), and views of the Golden Gate Bridge reaching across the waters to the Presidio are legion throughout the franchise.
Whilst what is San Francisco (inside or out) in Star Trek has never normally been filmed there, there is one glaring exception to this 'rule' of practicality — Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. You certainly can't miss San Francisco either in the movie's legendary advertising artwork, recently recreated for Lower Decks season four.
Downtown double dumbasses, bus rides, and nuclear wessels aside, the main thrust of Star Trek IV's San Fran layover was to pick up a couple of large Cetacea. In the film, Kirk and Spock went to The Cetacean Institute in Sausalito; in the real world, this was Monterey Bay Aquarium. Opened in 1984, the Monterey Bay Aquarium's core mission to this day is ocean conservation through action and education. However, whilst the Aquarium (and Monterey Bay itself) is home to a host of animals — from the acorn barnacle to the zebra moray — it has never actually housed a whale, let alone two!